Field
This disclosure relates generally to wireless communications systems. More specifically, embodiments disclosed herein relate to carrier allocation and management in multi-carrier communication systems.
Background
Communication systems have been developed to allow transmission of information signals from an origination station to a physically distinct destination station. In transmitting information signal from the origination station over a communication channel, the information signal is first converted into a form suitable for efficient transmission over the communication channel. Conversion, or modulation, of the information signal involves varying a parameter of a carrier wave in accordance with the information signal in such a way that the spectrum of the resulting modulated carrier is confined within the communication channel bandwidth. At the destination station the original information signal is replicated from the modulated carrier wave received over the communication channel. Such a replication is generally achieved by using an inverse of the modulation process employed by the origination station.
Modulation also facilitates multiple-access, e.g., simultaneous transmission and/or reception, of several signals over a common communication channel. For example, multiple-access communication systems may include a plurality of remote subscriber units (or access terminals) requiring intermittent service rather than continuous access to the common communication channel. Multiple access techniques may include code division multiple-access (CDMA), time division multiple-access (TDMA), frequency division multiple-access (FDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple-access (OFDMA), and other multiple-access techniques.
A multiple-access communication system may be a wireless and/or wire-line, and may carry voice, data, etc. A communication system may be designed to implement one or more standards.
As the demand for multimedia services and high-rate data rapidly grow, multi-carrier modulation has been proposed in wireless communication systems. There lies a challenge to provide efficient and robust multi-carrier communication systems.